Send to a friendObama birth certificate release: Smart move?Plus, David Petraeus the right pick for spymaster?

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Jeremy MayerAssociate Professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University :

It is very important to keep Petraeus on the president's team. Petraeus is the kind of military figure who would be an excellent nominee as VP for the GOP. Just having Petraeus on the outside, criticizing the president's policies would be very negative for this White House.

I am assuming that Petraeus will be able to make the kind of institutional shift that Colin Powell did when he shifted from a lifetime in DOD to leading the State Department. Both men were media savvy, brilliant bureaucratic leaders. It won't be easy, but people who have bet against David Petraeus have tended to lose their money.

I'm more worried about Panetta at DOD. The change from running the intel shop at CIA to running the massive six hundred headed hydra that is the DOD is an exponential one. And by choosing Panetta, the president gives himself very little cover with the military as he leads us to a wind down of three wars budget cuts that Defense has experienced in decades. It would be far wiser to pick someone with a larger defense portfolio in his background. Still, Panetta has done well at CIA, and that's not been an easy job these last few years.

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